THE BELFORT STAR



   Not long after Confederate and Mexican troops began their first serious thrust into Mesilla Valley, something else of monumental importance was coming to fruition nearly a half continent away, in the Chesapeake Bay. Unlike the first major Confederate offensive of the war, since the failed attempt to take Washington DC, this military operation was extremely small in scope and, at the time, very overlooked. It almost never happened and largely due to a recent political shakeup.
The long running Secretary of the Confederate Navy, James Bulloch, contracted what, some believe, was a bad case of malaria while visiting his home in Roswell, Georgia. The man was already seventy-seven years old and suffering from any number of health issues. He passed away in his bed, with his family at his side, and left the CS Navy in something of a shambles. This was not because he had neglected running his department and, in fact, it was due to the exact opposite reason.
As noted before, Bulloch ran the Confederate Navy as if it was his own private fiefdom. The CSN was probably the single most efficient bureaucracy within the Confederate Military. As long as it stayed that way then the various Presidents who came and went, unlike Bulloch, were not willing to spend the political clout to remove a man that was not only doing his job well but, was doing a job considered nearly impossible to begin with. Bulloch entrenched himself in his position and by the start of the war there was no one really even qualified to do his job. Bulloch had made sure of it.
This was not to say that there was a lack of men who quickly stepped up and demanded the position, despite how unappealing it must have looked. The fact was that Bulloch had made many enemies over the years and, ironically, most of them came from the political party he belonged too. The main source of this animosity was, without a doubt, what some critics of the CSN had scornfully and sarcastically dubbed, “the Great Black Fleet.” Even Bulloch had personally disliked the idea but, he and Longstreet had instituted the policy of using former slaves as sailors because the advantages were too great to ignore. At the time, it seemed as if it was the only way to get a very inward looking nation to take the steps required to ensure it’s prosperity and security.
The critics of the plan, chief amongst them being former President Wade Hampton, had vowed to end the policy of using blacks as military men. It is a testimony to the absolute power and political skill of Bulloch that Hampton was unable to stop it. Still, the faction that wanted white men to replace the black sailors did not go away even if they realized Bulloch would have to go before this ever happened. Now Bulloch was gone and the fact that their nation was in the middle of a war did not seem to bother the men who wanted to instantly replace nearly every sailor in their fleet.
This left President Wheeler in a very uncomfortable position. He also found the battle over the Navy to be quite distracting from things that he saw as important. Having been a general, Wheeler was quite accustomed to just giving orders and expecting others to follow. He expected whoever replaced Bulloch to do just that and Wheeler had no intentions of shaking up his navy at a time like this. Unfortunately politics in a working democracy are closer to an anarchy which is the exact opposite of any functioning military structure of the kind that Wheeler was accustomed.
Until this time, Wheeler had not been faced with a situation quite like the political firestorm that erupted over the death of Bulloch. Wheeler had inherited a government that, despite it’s quirks, functioned rather smoothly. This seems to have been for no other reason than it’s own irrelevancy. Once the first war with the United States was over with the CS Government diminished in importance with every passing year. The fact was that the presence of the United States was the only thing that gave the Confederate national government any authority at all. When people felt threatened they demanded that it act. When they felt safe they completely ignored it. With the outset of hostilities, Wheeler suddenly found himself dealing with a situation that no other President had since Jefferson Davis.
This situation might have erupted years earlier since the CSN was really the only asset of any importance that the national government had absolute authority over. Bulloch’s presence guaranteed stability here and, in many ways, it made him even more powerful than any sitting president. Now the entire department was being dumped in Wheelers lap and he was horrified to learn that the only man who knew ever aspect of it was dead.
With the exception of the battleship Texas, which was set for sea trials in early summer, and expected to be operational a month or so later, Bulloch’s death also endangered any number of projects that were on the boards. They were all at various stages of development and a good number of them were being supervised by Astin Greene.
Of course, Greene was completely ignorant of the political situation but, many of his benefactors were not. Greene was recalled from New Mexico where he was completely engrossed in the task of figuring out the most efficient ways of using his trucks. He was not very happy about having to report to Mobile but, he did it. The fact was that Greene could afford to ignore presidents but, not the Admirals in Mobile because they were ones shielding him from the politicians.
The Confederate Admiralty was fully aware of the political problem and realized that the current vacuum would not hold. Since they had no idea of who would replace Bulloch, they chose to press ahead with as many projects as they could, while they could. They chose one particular project to press upon Greene, and demand he personally supervise. The reasons for this were unclear to Greene but, he also did not have the full picture and his bosses did. So, after only a mild protest, Greene proceeded to Norfolk, Virginia and Hampton Roads, where this project was being readied for it’s first real test.
It was something of a lucky break for the CSN that Greene was in charge of this project in name only. While it is true that he developed many of it’s systems he was not the driving force behind it. The man that was really running the show was an Irish immigrant by the name of John Phillip Holland. Ironically, Holland had not immigrated directly from Ireland. He had actually come from New Jersey where he had lived for a short time after leaving Europe.
Holland once stated that what had sent him to America, and had sparked his fascination with naval warfare, were the warships of the American 61. Strangely enough, given his current project, the ships that really captured his imagination were the CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor who had unsuccessfully dueled each other to a standstill. Even as Holland’s first real prototype was being lowered in the water, he seems to have been completely unaware of the fact that it was the CSN that managed launch the first successful submarine attack in history. The CSS Hunley, that made this attack, was actually the first such vessel.
In 1900, the Hunley was officially still listed as being on active duty even if she was also listed as missing in action. It was more a memorial to the submarine since there was no one who really expected it to ever surface again. Still, the CSS Holland II was officially the second submarine on active duty at the time. While the Hunley was still sitting somewhere, rusting, on the bottom of Charleston bay, there were those who questioned if it were not more sea worthy than Holland’s creation. The new Confederate sub was not entirely finished when it was ordered into action and it had met with many of the same problems as it’s predecessor. That was namely finding a crew because most sailors simply refused to get in it. The Hunley had gotten around this by recruiting a crew from the Army. Fortunately they did not have to do it this time.
Compared to the Hunley, the Holland II was an almost space aged vessel in terms of technology. The Hunley’s power source was human muscle and it required a large crew to turn the crankshaft that propelled the boat. The Holland not only had a mechanical power plant but, it had something that very few other warships, at the time, could boast. She was powered by a small gasoline engine. Her fuel store was quite small and her range was rather limited but, gasoline is a much superior fuel to coal and, a steam plant would never have worked on a submersible anyway. The main effect of the power plant was that it reduced the size of the needed crew to only three men. This ultimately eliminated the problem of recruiting sailors.
Of course the needed support for the Holland II was considerable and it made her value as a military asset questionable. There was an entire dock and warehouse, in Norfolk, that was required to maintain and launch the vessel. A small army of engineers were required to practically rebuild her after every single cruise. Much headway had been made in fixing these problems but, there was simply no precedent to work with here. The Confederate engineers were having to come up with solutions from scratch. Fortunately this is where Astin Greene was the strongest and, it is easy to surmise, that without his input the Confederacy was liable to never make the Holland work.
Fortunately for the CSN they were not the only ones encountering unforeseen problems. The very reason why Holland was no longer living in New Jersey, Thomas Alva Edison, was still there and working on his own version of a submarine. By the time of the war, Edison was already a famous inventor and since the outset of hostilities he had concentrated mostly on government contracts and weapons development. Ironically, none of these efforts would ever pan out and Edison’s most lasting contribution to the conflict would be something that he had invented but, had never considered it’s military potential and political ramifications.
Edison’s attempts at making his own submersible seem to be completely centered around his obsession with beating Holland to the punch. Edison had gone out of his way to make things difficult for Holland and, combined with substantial cash offers from the Confederacy, wound up depriving the United States of a valuable mind. Edison also lacked the input of Greene. Even if Greene was not the most military minded of fellows he had a far better grasp of the needs of warships than did Edison. Edison’s attempts showed this in everything from his choice of weaponry to workspace for the crew. That might not have been the entire reason that the US Navy eventually rejected Edison’s submarine but, it could not have helped.
Greene had spared the Confederate effort a great many of the pitfalls encountered by the Edison. The first and most notable of these was the choice of weaponry. It was clear that Edison had stolen Holland’s initial idea of a pair of dynamite guns that were mounted forward and aft on the original designs. Greene quickly saw them as worthless even if there were some similar weapons in service with the Army at the time. Greene was reasoning that the ultimate naval ordinance had already been invented, so why not use that?
This ultimate weapon was, of course, the Whitehead Torpedo. It had most certainly revolutionized naval warfare but, much like the machinegun on land, it’s actual effects had yet to be fully realized. No one had taken countermeasures into effect for either weapon, even if they were already being used. A Whitehead could sink any ship afloat but, first you had to hit that shit. As soon as torpedo boats were invented, ships designed to kill those torpedo boats, the naval destroyer, were put to sea as fast possible. The resulting stalemate meant that the true value of the Torpedo was not really it’s use but, simply it’s presence. This made the Whitehead more of a defensive weapon and it was something that most Admirals were yet to admit.
What Greene had in mind, if it worked, would change this maritime stalemate. He was banking on using the one real advantage of a submersible, that being stealth, to deliver a deadly Whitehead before anyone even knew what hit them. The plan was sound enough but, the real trick, making it work. When the Holland II was lowered in the water she had no real intrinsic weaponry. In that respect, she was no different than the Hunely. She could only ram a target if she wished to do damage and, much like the Hunley, this would most likely result in the Holland’s destruction as well. What she did have, strapped to her hull, was a Whitehead Torpedo and it’s bulky addition to the Holland’s mass was not so much an afterthought as it was the fact that the weapon was nearly as large as the ship firing it.
The torpedo did not have the bulk of the sub but it was a good foot and a half longer. It was an almost comical looking thing mounted on pods that were bolted to Holland’s port side hull. The weapon could not even be carried in this fashion while the boat was out of the water. Extra straps had to be cut by support personnel after the sub was wet. A very awkward, electrical, and quite impromptu firing mechanism had been rigged up to launch her. Nobody had even given much thought on how to aim it since her crew was praying that it would even detach once the torpedo’s motor was started.
Holland was also less than stealthy. She had to be towed to her patrol station by a pair of river boats from the James River Flotilla.  It was slow going and the Holland was not the most maneuverable of vessels. Unlike what we think of submarines today, she did not completely submerge ever. She also did not ever truly surface either. The ballast on the vessel was not adjustable and she always sat with her conning tower and top deck just out of the water. In practical terms her constant depth meant that the number of channels that could be taken, in such a shallow body or water, was limited at best. Given the proliferation of mines in the Chesapeake it is a miracle that all three vessels even reached their destination.
The Holland also had considerable drag. A ship sitting on top of the water, particular shallow draft vessels such as the patrol boats, were not as subject to the force of tides and currents as was Holland. The submarine was taking the full brunt of the water and her escorts were constantly having to adjust their course and over work their engines to keep from being pulled into a bad situation. Again, it was a miracle that Holland was sitting on station by dark.
After the patrol ships pulled in the tow cables, and then retreated to a safe inlet to wait out the night, the Holland’s troubles only got worse. Her engine was not really capable of getting her anywhere and if she ever needed speed she was doomed. What they were really for was keeping her on station and they were proving to be remarkably inefficient at that. The tide was currently going out and Holland was expending great amount of her limited fuel to keep from going out with it. At the rate of consumption the crew really doubted their ability to remain on station all night. Then luck happened their way.
The Belfort Star was a short ranged shallow draft steamer that operated out of Baltimore. Since the war had shut down all commerce along her normal routes, the only work that Belfort had acquired since the onset of hostilities was that which the US Army ordered.  Belfort had been requisitioned by the Army and sailed under her command for almost two years now. On this night in mid April, she was making a rather typical journey to the Maryland shoreline to unload over eight hundred US soldiers that were fresh off the train from New Jersey. The men on board were right out of basic training and had yet to even be assigned to a unit. None of them ever knew what hit them. None of them would ever live to see the sun rise.